ILL ETIQUETTE: YOU (OUGHTA) HEAR A GREAT BIG FLUSHING SOUND

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

Not only is what we bring to a bathroom experience and what we ultimately leave behind one and the same, it isn't especially pleasant to dwell on or gaze down upon. But gaze we must. Because - and it pains me to say this, really, it does - I've noticed a unfortunate tendency on the part of public restroom patrons lately: they evacuate, flush weakly, then bolt. (I'll save my diatribe on the importance of lathering and washing hands for another time.) As a result, the process of deciding which stall to occupy - a process that shouldn't require much thought at all – more often than not turns into a gruesome game of eenie-meenie-mo.

Sometimes, it's necessary to hang around a minute to see whether everything is sucked into the sewer system. (If you've clogged the bowl, don't stroll away whistling as though nothing happened. Have the decency to let someone - someone with a plunger, ideally - know that the bowl is clogged; you don't have to identity yourself as the culprit.)

Sometimes, you need to flush twice to cover your tracks.

Sometimes, you only need to flush once, but to initiate the flushing mechanism, you've really gotta put your wrist, maybe your whole forearm, into the act of moving that handle. For the love of God, do this. Hold your breath, close your eyes, whatever you've gotta do, but strain and concentrate until you've flushed that bowl clean.

Karma.

ILL CASH QUERIES: SIX MORE QUESTIONS FOR RAPPERS WHO MAKE IT RAIN

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

No, we couldn’t leave well enough alone.

1. In our very limited experience - limited to rap videos, pretty much - flush-with-paper rappers usually opt to make it rain in nightclubs and strip clubs. But is there any rule that prohibits ballers from making it rain while checking out in the 10 Items Or Less aisle at Wegman’s, during a family summer barbeque, or while undergoing a routine physical? What if the urge to bring the thunder struck you during Sunday service when you realized that the collection plate was just a few parishioners away? Would you heed that call?

2. Let’s say that you want to make it rain, but you just don’t have that much cash on you - if you’ve got $1,000 in $100s, that’s weak sauce - and there’s no way to break any of it into smaller denominations. But you’ve got tons of change outside in the Escalade. If you throw that change instead, are you making it sprinkle? Would you ever do that? (You might hurt some people, and the effect wouldn’t be quite the same.)

3. Is there something one shouts just prior to making it rain, like a warning or announcement or something? Or do you just sort of impulsively hurl dead presidents into the air when the mood strikes you?

4. Have you ever made it rain only to realize that no-one noticed, and that, for all intents and purposes, it never actually happened?

5. Do you ever practice making it rain while alone at home, with Monopoly money?

6. If they can put on a man on the moon, why can’t they invent or biologically engineer a Yves St Laurent branded, Eva Longoria-look-alike fem-bot to throw your money for you while you’re buying out the bar?

ILL CASH QUERIES: FIVE QUESTIONS FOR RAPPERS WHO MAKE IT RAIN

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

Hip-hop’s storied history of “making it rain” - throwing fistfuls of cash into the air in a public venue in order to make a declarative statement about one’s extravagant, inexhaustible wealth - appears to be on the wane. Despite Gucci Mane’s recent insistence that he and his crew throw money “like we mad at the ceiling” and a confused Jim Jones naming his latest mediocre effort Prey IV Reign, the drought is apparently over and rain sticks being put away. “Niggas still makin’ it rain, and we off that,” Timbaland admonished, several weeks ago, on “Off That” from Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3. Producer/singer The-Dream joined the debate on a lament-strewn Love vs. Money cut: “I can’t even hate the homie/I am to blame/Instead of loving her, I was making it rain.” But we had some lingering questions about the practice, and because we don’t know any ballers, shot-callers, or rappers personally - let alone any who regularly make it rain - we figured we’d pose them here in the hopes that our readers could answer them or maybe pass them along to somebody who can.

1. When you’re preparing to go out for the evening, do you specifically designate a certain amount of money as “making-it-rain money,” in the same way one wad of greenbacks might be “stripper-tip money” or another might serve as “buying-out-the-bar money,” or is it all the same to you?

2. What happens immediately after the money is thrown? Do you - or an underling, perhaps - gather it up? Or can other people fight for it? Let’s say, hypothetically, you were hurling $100 bills, and some of those bills fell - sorry, rained - into a puddle of puke. Would you demand that paper back?

3. When you’re making it rain, do you throw all big bills, like $100s or $50s? Or do you cheat a little, throwing a couple big bills with a bunch of $5s and $10s?

4. Is there a gentleman’s rule about simultaneous rain storms? By this I mean, is it customary for rappers to take turns making it rain? It should be, right? Because that would cut back on disagreements about whose storm front was more formidable or dope or what have you.

5. Have you ever hired a professional counterfeiter to fabricate currency for the express purpose of this sort of showing out, only to have someone with intimate knowledge of U.S. legal tender - like an off-duty Treasury agent, maybe - pick up one or two at the spot where you’re throwing Benjamins and call you out on it while you’re hoisting a chalice of expensive champagne with your entourage? If so, how do you come back from something like that?

You know, I love the idea that the entire overarching conceit of "River of Brakelights" appears to be Julian Casablancas getting, just, way, way too into spinning the actuality of bonkers NYC traffic into some quasi-poetic, philosophical/omniscient treatise about Darwinian societal ratraces and urban sprawl, to the extent that he unknowingly exasperates whoever's supposed to be squiring him back from whatever party they're trying to escape, and that person just up and bolts while Casablancas is obliviously belting out this rhythmically-exacting observational epic on a Brooklyn (or Williamsburg, maybe) street corner, I guess. And then at the end of the song, Julian's all "Where did you go? You were my ride home!" Sometimes you've just gotta know when to shut up.

ILL PRIORITIES: Eight Things That New Nobel Peace Prize Winner Barack Obama Should Do Today

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

1. Climb to the White House roof and let loose with one of those intense air-punching fits that sports fans unleash when their teams reach the playoffs. Also: shout "YESSSS!" a couple times.

2. If they're in or near the capitol today, exchange a high-five or Revolutionary drug brothers handshake with Al Gore, and give Bono a nuggie.

3. Treat Michelle to a night out on the town. She's a good woman who doesn't get out much.

4. Figure out where, exactly, to display the Nobel medal: mounted on the Oval Office desk? Over the headboard? In the Air Force One commode? Or would it make more sense to have several replicas made for display in each of those locations, then stash the actual medal somewhere else?

5. Rush order a replacement for that Swiss Army Knife he lost back in junior high.

6. Leave Jay-Z a voicemail: "Eleven number one records is quite an accomplishment, but, you know, I just won a Nobel Prize today."

7. Treat himself to at least two or three Kit-Kat bars.

8. Drop a couple crisp new Hamiltons on lottery tickets, because, hey, you never know.

NOT-SO-ILL Q+A: PSYCHIC ILLS

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

Brooklyn, New York foursome Psychic Ills are responsible for some of the modern era's most modest space- and psych-rock workouts; the oft-mannered, elliptical swirl-cone throb on 06' Dins evoked Scottish garage-rockers Clinic and krautrock legends Can at their most sober and self-contained. Last year's Mirror Eye - recorded following the departure of founding member Tom Gluibizzi and the addition of new keyboardist/synth player Jimy SeiTang - found the Social Registry signees emerging a sound less submerged but no less trippy.

In a mid-September email interview – which was supposed to run on the web site of an East Coast alt-weekly, but was scrapped, understandably, because it was too pithy – we quizzed droll multi-instrumentalists SeiTang, Tres Warren, Elizabeth Hart, and Brian Tamborello about their handle, their mutating sound, and their arresting cover art. You can tell that the band really, really put their hearts and souls into answering my questions – and for that, I’m so grateful that I’m practically turning blue because I’m poking a hole through my cheek. Cheers!

Ill With The Composition: What, exactly, are "psychic ills"? Whenever I see or think of your name, I immediately flash on the Yellow Swans' Psychic Secession.

Tres Warren: It's just a name--a couple of words put together. I don’t know that record, but I saw them at Tonic a couple years ago and was into it.

IWTC: How did wind up on tour with the Butthole Surfers? That's huge.

TW: We got asked to do it.

Elizabeth Hart: The day we got the email about the tour, I had listened to The Butthole Surfers while on the subway en route to work. Synchronicity. It was kind of a no-brainer.

IWTC: While Dins struck me as songs emerging from then receding back into a sort of primordial static, Mirror Eye seems, in a way, more realized or direct even as it's got a prism-psych feel to it. Did you go into recording Eye with a different methodology in mind?

Jimy SeiTang: Perhaps so. Maybe some of the Moldavite prism crystals were aligned differently when we went and recorded that album.

Brian Tamborello: Not necessarily. We didn’t go into it with any defined methodology. Of course, we had changed as people over the couple years that had passed, and Jimy had joined us, so there were just natural differences in the way we approached the music.

IWTC: Can you tell me a bit about the significance of your album artwork? The cover of Dins had a sort of pop-realism feel, with candy-colored blotches overlaying a grainy, black-and-white photo of a helicopter, while Mirror Eye's cover seems to be a blurred action shot of a woman playing a tambourine that looks as though it were ripped from a magazine.

TW: The cover of Dins is a painting by Wolf Vostell, from 1968, called "Three Hairs and Shadow." The cover of Mirror Eye was pretty much ripped out of a newspaper--well, it was a collage that I removed the collage elements from.

IWTC: You record live to tape, right? Do you find that that process yields more unusual results, happy accidents?

BT: Recording live naturally opens the process up to both pleasant surprises and frustrating confrontations with the music. Sometimes the latter creates a tension that leads to, and can only be shattered by, the former. “Mantis” was basically born of that.

IWTC: What's coming up next for Psychic Ills? After the tour, of course.

TW: Hanging around. Probably make another record. Stuff like that.

JST: New concepts, new ideas through sound and textures - and yeah, lots of hanging around.

IWTC: Bands that make mystical, lysergic music seem to take on an automatic shroud of mystery, even if they don't intend to; they almost become living myths, even if they're just regular folks. What do you think that your fans would be surprised to learn about each of you?

TW: I don’t know. That we were killing time at nudist hot springs between shows the last time we played on the West Coast?

JST: That we all live through another dollar, another day.

ILL ALUMINUM TUNES: John Wiese's "Circle Snare"

John Wiese
Circle Snare
(No Fun Productions)

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

That John Wiese and his sample fetish, right? You know?

The California-based noise laptopper's last couple - or couple dozen, same difference - recordings have involved warpings and manglings, severe and and less so, of others' already malign sonics. Cincinatti, conceived and recorded with Burning Star Core atmospherist C. Spencer Yeh and released earlier this year, delved into self-sampling-as-aesthetic. But Circle Snare (No Fun), where Wiese built compositions from recordings of "tape, electronics, drum machine, microphone, [and] MSP" is a more slippery, stripped-down affair.

At moments, listening to this, I thought of the sounds of a metal lid being twisted off of a peanut bottle, then back on, then back off, and of barehanded mountain climbers painstakingly ascending, slipping down, then scrabbling back up sheer cliff faces; there's a brute circularity to Snare at first, to how and where snaps, crackles, and stark pops fall in the mix as "Circle Snare (First)" begins its uncertain-to-all-outward-appearances advance. Noise "errors" and detritus that would typically be edited out or relegated to the margins is slowly brought to the forefront over a glowering synth substrata. Then the spits and clicks and whirrs actually seem to go on the attack, a revolving, homicidal constellation of minutiae. The remainder of Snare mines more chaos-theory gold from this idea, approaching things slightly different, no-less-intriguing angles, building from meager table scraps to something that eats, ultimately, like a hearty meal.

ILL IMAGINARY PRODUCT: "ESTRADA" SPECS NOT FOR REAL

BY RAYMOND CUMMINGS

As an impressionable young boy - innocent, light of step, totally sold on violence-soaked, prime-time television trash - I watched CHiPs religiously. As with so many other fondly remembered early-to-mid 1980s series (Miami Vice, All In The Family, The Dukes of Hazzard, etc.), I don't actually remember much of anything about the show in terms of dialogue, plots, or what have you; in this instance, all that comes to mind is the iconic intro image of Erik Estrada and whatever white dude was rolling with him riding their highway patrol cycles against an open sky. That, and a flurry of scenes where Estrada's squeeze was hit and killed by a car, but her dog survived; it was a fluffly little white dog; Estrada cradling the dog and stuff.

In any event, Erik Estrada isn't dead. Recently, he appeared in a Burger King commercial with NASCAR's Tony Stewart in which he's hawking signature cop shades with "ESTRADA" superimposed on the lenses. Now, these sunglasses don't actually exist, and aren't for sale. It goes without saying that your corner vender of illegal Armani and Gucci knockoffs should be making a killing off of the things - and if you wait a few weeks, he or she just might be - but that's not stopping me from wondering who'd profit from wearing the things if they became available.

ELLEN DEGENERES

She's spunky! She's quirky! She cannot dance, but dances anyway! She's the host of a daytime talk show imfamous for mercilessly short celebrity interviews! For reasons that defy the laws of space and time, she will co-judge American Idol this winter! Ellen should just - as soon as reasonably possible - start wearing "Estrada" specs all the time. When quizzed about them, she should pretend that the questioner asked "Why are you wearing a pancho indoors?" to which the only reasonable response is "I'm not wearing a pancho, this is a frisky work shirt that I'm rocking like a slightly spazzed-out office drone celebrating happy hour."

TONY DANZA

Tony Danza's inexplicable, deathless popularity results in the Who's The Boss? star being accosted and smothered in hugs by dozens of menopausal soccer grandmas everytime he goes to Whole Foods, which is, like, every day. Enough of that bullshit. He needs a disguise!

EDWARD FURLONG

Because a pair of "Estrada" sunglasses could, hypothetically, re-interest the paparrazi class in the doings of Terminator 2 star Edward Furlong.

JA RULE

Ditto. But as I understand it, Ja is a giving fella. Which would mean that the two people in his entourage would also probably receive "Estrada" shades, on him! What a guy. It's MURDA!

ILL CH-CH-CH-CHIA: Three People Who Should Get a "Chia Obama" for X-Mas

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

You've seen - and loathed - those commercials. You've cracked, rightly, that the Chia Obama looks nothing like Barack Obama. And surely - though you can't quite bear to admit it to yourself or anyone else - you've wondered: if I was inclined to actually buy a few of these things, who would I give them to for Christmas?

We've got some ideas.


YOUR OBAMA-ADORING AUNTIE

She's got the "Yes We Can" tote bag, the buttons, the t-shirt(s). She tracked down mp3s of our president's address on race, his acceptance speech, his inauguration speech, and some secretly-recorded audio of the dude joshing with reporters on a plane between campaign stops. Now she can place a ridiculously inaccurate rendering of Hope's grinning herald on her mantle, one that sprouts vegetative folicles.

YOUR STONER HOMIES

They like to talk to themselves, to the carpet, to the dog, to the fireplace, and to the television whenever Maury Povich or Larry King is on, and they like to imagine that those objects respond in kind, taking part in lively, round-robin conversations about which Doritos flavors rule, and which ones are totally bogus, and the plusses and minuses of exoticly-named cannibus strains. Now, because you are thoughtful and know them better than they know themselves, your stoner homies can palaver with the prez - or just convert him into a bong.

JOHN MCCAIN

Gardening's rough when you can't raise your arms above waist-level. With Chia Obama - or a thousand Chia Obamas, perhaps, if you are a financially secure prankster with access to John McCain's mailing address - the 2008 Republican presidential hopeful can tend a literal plot of Hope with very little effort, while vibrating with geriatric loser's rage.

ILL PHRASE POLICE PATROL: "It Is What It Is"

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

When folks - in reflexively surrendering to what they perceive as an unchangeable circumstance or condition - lazily sigh "it it what it is," I cringe. Something toxic washes over me. The situation at hand suddenly feels just that much more hopeless and unsalvagable; any confidence hovering in the room evaporates. Department managers and rappers seem inordinately fond of the phrase, drawn to its dismissive, near-palindromic cool like lemmings to the edge of a yawning ravine. Said with an air of abject resignation, "it is what it is" stands in for "that's life" or "what will be will be" or Sopranos hands-thrown-up staple "whaddya gonna do?" Why not use one of these ancillary phrases, one wonders? Why not invent a new cliché to signal intractability? Why not say "rock meets hard place?" (Nobody ever says that. Which may be for the best.) In any event, "it is what it is" is unacceptable phraseology. and must be destroyed.

ILL COMPARE/CONTRAST: "Bernie Madoff With Brethren"

RAYMOND CUMMINGS

ILL HOW-TO: BLOGGING YOUR WAY TO INTERNET-FIRESTORM INFAMY (or at least a book deal)

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

1. Take a strong position about a person, group of persons, idea, or institution that is in stark opposition to the general consensus.

2. Explain in detail why other people are wrong, and you are right. Cite examples that support your hypothesis. Name names; take no prisoners.

3. Share a personal anecdote - or several - tangentially related to whatever issue is under discussion.

4. Swear. Rather, swear in moderation. Swear for emphasis. Swear tastefully. But swear. (Do not, however, swear on your mother, your grandmother, or your grandmother's mother.)

5. Come up with cruel nicknames for people who will probably disagree with you and, hopefully, will smear your credibility in the comments sections. You will also need cruel nicknames for those persons, groups of persons, ideas, or institutions you are attacking. All of these nicknames should be pointed, funny, and bear a hint of truth. When rival bloggers give you dap or condemn you on their own blogs, readers of those blogs should be forced to stifle a guffaw and automatically feel moved to check out your original post, because you are a clever, insightful Web 2.0 intellectual. You are a cultural shaman. You are so money.

6. Proffer false empathy for those for those who will inevitably disagree with you, those who are part of the problem, and yourself, for caring so much about this issue. Then turn on a dime and whip out the chainsaw.

7. Conclude with a witty endnote that ties together all that came before and, crucially, suggests that all is not lost.

8. Repeat.

ILL COMPOSITION NOTEBOOK DEFACEMENT: PART 6 IN A SERIES

RAYMOND CUMMINGS

ILL COMPOSITION NOTEBOOK DEFACEMENT: PART 5 IN A SERIES

RAYMOND CUMMINGS

ILL LSD SNOWCONE: Neon Indian, "Laughing Gas"

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

Sometime during the past week or so, as July gave way to August, summer finally decided to make an appearance in central Pennsylvania; suddenly, the air possessed a muggy heft, sweat came easier, and the constant hum of our basement dehumidifier became part of the overall domestic ambience. Lazy dips in the cheapie inflatable - and largely neglected - backyard pool became imperative; yard work, less so. And then -as if on cue - the promo for Neon Indian's Psychic Chasm materialized in my mailbox, Tex-Mex hued paper sleeve and all.

So what've we got here? A post-Ducktails, post-Ariel Pink laptop stew that burbles and warps like overbearing summer sunshine (ozone alerts, we hardly knew ye) is supposed to. The aluminum definition of what Glenn Danzig meant by "dirty black summer." Interstate traffic jams that seem to have no beginning or ending, and weeks later, all you can recall is the sensation of roasting alive in a smoldering cage of plastic, steel, and upholstery.

As titled, "Laughing Gas" suggests delirium, dementia, surreality. As experienced, it delivers those questionable goods: dosed giggles looped and cajoled, a synth hook nicked from a half-dozen 80s pop-radio staples and hiccup-ed into vertigo-disco infinity, an almost seasick rhythmic bounce, vintage boom-bap beats. Freed from the Reagan-era associations it evokes, "Gas" runs the risk of seeming inconsequential, disposable, trifling; yoked to them, it conjures the flush of near-dehydration following a day-camp marathon, four-square throw downs, "Cruel Summer" blaring from a Cyndi Lauper-wannabe counselor's ever-present boom box.

Click here for the Lefse Records site, where non-"Laughing Gas" Neon Indian songs are available for free download.

ILL TYPE PROFILING: Evan Kasprzak Can't Lose

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

It's not that Evan Kasprzak can't dance; he can. If you hanker for la-de-da, tie-and-slacks, aw-shucks Gene Kelly routines, Kasprzak will, quite literally, have you eating out of the palm of his hand. On the fifth season of So You Think You Can Dance, which wraps tonight, Kasprzak's solos were all about that razzle-dazzle, that sweat less flair, those mid-air heel-clicks and twirls; he was a delight to behold. Broadway will welcome him with open arms.

The problem, of course, was that So You Think You Can Dance - think of it as Dancing With The Stars with actual balls and Julliard-level competitors of whom you've never heard - prizes excellence in and domination of pretty much every last style of dance known to man: to make it to the big finale (theoretically), one must be able to demonstrate a mastery of everything from krump to the fox trot to modern to hip-hop to Bollywood to mass, synchronized routines where everyone's done up as scary, sad clowns that are actually malfunctioning dolls. (Avant-garde shit is crazy.) One must be convincing. One must, to all appearances, mean it. One must be willing, after these performances, to stand before judges who can be pretty cruel and heartless and swallow shattering critiques with nods and winning smiles and humility.

I never got the sense that Kasprzak meant his dancing, except when he was on his default-mode Fred Astaire bullshit; he has a gentle, gee-whiz (hangdog) mug that projects a gentle, gee-whiz (hangdog) kindness regardless of what he's dancing. He's consistently been a few beats or moves behind whoever's been unlucky enough to have him as a partner. He kills routines in the sense that he saps them of whatever inherent vitality or intensity they might possess. He is extreme dance kryptonite.

And yet Kasprzak is among the final four dancers. He has outlasted at least seven or eight amazingly talented contenders, including the inhumanly versatile Janette Manrara and Ade Obayomi, whose flips and pirouettes and other uncanny aerial maneuvers were nothing short of breathtaking. For this, I blame the grandmas and fourth graders of our great nation: the same people who, via telephony, relentlessly championed David Archleta and Kris Allen in the last two seasons of American Idol.

After watching last night's performance finale, I cast something like 15 votes each for Jeanine Mason and Brandon Bryant, gazelle-like stunners for whom serious dance company contracts and stardom are givens. They will still lose, of course - and lose big - because the contingent of viewers who demand that their champions be milquetoast, cuddly momma's boys is so vast that if they were to suddenly take up arms against the rest of the country, our swift, collective demise would be certain, and brutal. Heaven help us all.

ILL AMERICAN IDOL FOLLIES: Kara DioGuardi Survives to Judge, Annoy for Another Fucking Season of "Idol"

It's possible that someone, somewhere, reading this post really enjoyed Kara DioGuardi's stint as an American Idol judge, earlier this year. You - the royal "you" - felt that she brought a touch of gravatas and sassy spice and music-biz insider heft to a judges' panel consisting of a curmudgeonly (if consistently on-the-money) grump, a vapid, catchphrase-recycling fool, and a pop has-been whose diction is increasingly labored and robotic, at best. Perhaps you were charmed, during the eighth season finale, when she got on stage with Bikini Girl and ripped off her dress. (We were not charmed. Rather, we were chagrined. Perhaps we're just old.) It's possible that you were driven to sympathy as audience shenanigans and between-judges sniping in the press rattled the former aspiring songbird and songwriter. Maybe you said some prayers because you'd heard that Kara wasn't coming back to Idol; more likely, you popped open a bottle of Carlos Santana champagne. Well, she's back, snitches - and, meanwhile, Paula Abdul hasn't re-uped her contract. Which pretty much portends a totally unwatchable American Idol Season Nine, in our (admittedly jaundiced) view.

ILL SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: Somehow, We're Missing Rick Yemm

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

As even casual Ice Road Truckers viewers will admit, Rick Yemm is an exceptionally easy guy to loathe. He's cocky. He's confrontational. He's arrogant. He habitually refers to himself as "Ice Road Rick" - with declarative, defensive emphasis, so it comes out like "I'M ICE ROAD RICK!!!" - a sobrequet he probably employs, shamelessly, as a pick-up line. Now, admittedly, hauling massive, oversized loads over slick, icy roads and frozen-yet-melting oceans requires a certain degree of self-confidence and ego; the men and women featured on this show are all slightly cracked. But most of them are able to keep their insanity in reserve, interacting easily with the paternaturally mild-mannered managers and supervisors whose jobs depend on their ability to coordinate the transport of trailers and humongous tires and machines as big as a McMansion through snow squalls and windstorms. Rick Yemm, on the other hand, drives these overseers to uncharacteristic fits of pique and violence - which might help explain why we haven't seen him on the current season of Ice Road Truckers. This season, the producers have shifted the action from far-flung Canadian ice-oceans to treacherous, winding mountain roads in Alaska; they've brought back gruff polar-bear Hugh and wisecracking salt-dog Alex (who was sidelined by medical issues halfway through the previous season) while introducing several new drivers. What this season really lacks is an anti-hero, an antagonist, some rancor. (Danger isn't enough; the show makes sure to drive home the point that these drivers are liable to slide off road and die in a cataclysmic fireball at any moment.) Ice Road Truckers needs Rick Yemm, if not a qualified substitute. Rick Yemm taunting cooll-hand-luke Jesse, chatting up thrill-seeker tomboy Lisa, swearing at hapless mechanics, freewheeling recklessly down dangerous grades, and just being the hardheaded jackass we love to hate.

ILL DECONSTRUCTION: "The Light That Buzzed"

ILL MUSICAL MADELEINES: New Order, "Subculture" (c. 1998-1999)

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

My undergrad senior year was an emotional horror-show on more levels than I can accurately articulate now, a decade-plus after the fact. I went for long, brooding walks, at all hours, because I rarely slept. Really, where to begin with that year? The scabbies plague? The crushing, immobilizing lethargy? The relentless loneliness? The all-encompassing certainty that I was destined to flunk Logic (a math requirement, Philosophy-major must, and graduation get-out-of-college-free card, all wrapped in one)? The very-real fear that four years of liberal arts education, most of it wasted on campus publications no-one read, would not lead to gainful, satisfying employment? I wanted out of academia, in the worst possible way - didn't seriously pursue graduate programs, didn't even begin to cram for GREs - but was terrified of what awaited me beyond that tantalizing tassel-flip. I went for long, brooding walks, at all hours, because I rarely slept. I'd been entrusted, that year, with editorship of The Collegian, an almost-monthly features magazine; very few had any interest in writing for the thing, let alone reading it, and its six 1998-1999 issues were essentially glorified versions of the irreverent, sardonic zines I was still cranking out at the time that nobody read, either. (I still have nightmares in which I'm back in that particular editor's chair, somehow armed with everything about life and journalism that I've learned since, fully cognizant that I'm dreaming and yet bursting with ideas that will make my Collegian do-over totally fucking rad and unfadeable, award-winning, triumphant. Then I wake up, and I'm all, "that was too real.") My Philosophy thesis - some bullshit about Michel Foucault and how the power of cigarette makers is made manifest by the effects of smoking on the bodies of smokers - crashed and burned, so I settled for a minor in that discipline, sweated out long English essays, listened to The Slim Shady LP waaaay too much, took a lot of dangerous walks alone, procrastinated ruthlessly, climbed trees, skipped a record number of classes, wrote quixotic newspaper columns, re-read Ellis' Glamorama over and over, skipped Dining Hall meals because underclassmen's general la-de-da cheeriness drove me even deeper into the depression that, unchecked, threatened to consume me whole. I went for long, brooding walks, at all hours, because I rarely slept. I was in a non-zone. All of my close friends had graduated already; they could relate to what I was wrestling with, but consoling telephone conversations can only accomplish so much. Those friends who remained had more pressing concerns. I went for long, brooding walks, at all hours, because I rarely slept. I went for long, brooding walks, at all hours, because I rarely slept. I went for long, brooding walks, at all hours, because I rarely slept. Paul Cox put "Subculture" - the non-gospel choir version - on a mixtape that he sent to me as part of a mixtape exchange project, meaning that I was supposed to listen for a month prior to sending the tape to somebody else. But I didn't do that. I held onto the tape, which also included Talking Heads and Sugarsharp songs, for months, and quite literally let the tape rock until the tape popped. The details of that period, beyond what I've laid out above, are hazy. Thank God for that. And Paul? My bad.